A SAFE MAN
James Wheaton was thirty-five years old, and was reckoned among the
solid young business men of Clarkson. He had succeeded far beyond his
expectations and was fairly content with the round of the ladder that he
had reached. He never talked about himself and as he had no intimate
friends it had never been necessary for him to give confidences. His
father had been a harness-maker in a little Ohio town; he and his older
brother were expected to follow the same business; but the brother grew
restless under the threat of enforced apprenticeship and prevailed on
James to run away with him. They became tramps and enjoyed themselves
roaming through the country, until finally they were caught stealing in
a little Illinois village and both were arrested.
James was discharged through the generosity of his brother in taking all
the blame on himself; the older boy was sent to a reformatory alone.
James then went to Chicago, where he sold papers and blacked boots for a
year until he found employment as a train boy, with a company operating
on various lines running out of Chicago. This gave him a wide
acquaintance with western towns, and incidentally with railroads and
railroad men. He grew tired of the road, and obtained at Clarkson a
position in the office of Timothy Margrave, the general manager of the
Transcontinental, which, he had heard, was a great primary school for
ambitious boys.
It was thus that his residence in Clarkson was established. He attended
night school, was assiduous in his duties, and attained in due course
the dignity of a desk at which he took the cards of Margrave's callers,
indexed the letter books and copied figures under the direction of the
chief clerk. After a year, hearing that one of the Clarkson National
Bank's messengers was about to resign, he applied for this place.
Margrave recommended him; the local manager of the news agency vouched
for his integrity, and in due course he wended the streets of Clarkson
with a long bill-book, the outward and visible sign of his position as
messenger. He was steadily promoted in the bank and felt his past
receding farther and farther behind him.
When, at an important hour of his life, Wheaton was promoted to be
paying teller, he was in the receiving teller's cage. He had known that
the more desirable position was vacant and had heard his fellow clerks
speculating as to the possibility of a promotion from among their
number. Thompson, the cashier, had a nephew in the bank; and among the
clerks he was thought to have the best chance. They all knew that the
directors were in session, and several whose tasks for the day were
finished, lingered later than was their wont to see what would happen.
Wheaton kept quietly at his work; but he had an eye on the door of the
directors' room, and an ear that insensibly turned toward the
annunciator by which messengers were called to the board room. It rang
at last, and Wheaton wiped his pen with a little more than his usual
care as he waited for the result of the summons. This was on his
twenty-fifth birthday.
"Mr. Wheaton!" The other clerks looked at one another. The question that
had been uppermost with all of them for a week past was answered.
Thompson's nephew slammed his book shut and carried it into the vault.
Wheaton put aside the balance sheet over which he had been lingering and
went into the directors' room. There had been no note of joy among his
associates. He knew that he was not popular with them; he was not, in
their sense, a good fellow. When they rushed off after hours to the ball
games or horse races, he never joined them. When their books did not
balance he never volunteered to help them. As for himself, he always
balanced, and did not need their help; and they hated him for it. This
was his hour of triumph, but he went to his victory without the cheer of
his comrades.
He heard Mr. Porter's question as to whether he felt qualified to accept
the promotion; and he sat patiently under the inquiries of the others as
to his fitness. It required no great powers of intuition to know that
these old men had already appointed him; that if they had not known to
their own satisfaction that he was the best available man, they would
not be taking advice from him in the matter.
"Sanders leaves on Monday to take another position, and we will put you
in his cage to give you a trial," the president said, finally. Wheaton
expressed his gratitude for this mark of confidence. He was not
troubled by the suggestion of a trial. Porter and Thompson, the cashier,
always spoke of his promotions as "trials." He had never failed thus far
and his self-confidence was not disturbed by the care these men always
took to tie strings to everything they did with a view to easy
withdrawal, if the results were not satisfactory. The position had been
filled and there was nothing more to be said. Thompson, however, always
liked to have a last word.
"Wheaton, your family live here, don't they?"
"No," said Wheaton, smiling his difficult smile, "I haven't any family.
My parents are dead. I came here from Ohio, and board over on the north
side."
"Another Ohio man," said Porter, "you can't keep 'em down." They all
laughed at Porter's joke and Wheaton bowed himself out under cover of
it.
Later, when need arose for creating the position of assistant cashier,
it was natural that the new desk should be assigned to Wheaton. He was
faithful and competent; neither Porter nor Thompson had a son to install
in the bank; and, as they said to each other and to their fellow
directors, Wheaton had two distinguishing qualifications,--he did his
work and he kept his mouth shut.
In the course of time Thompson's health broke down and the doctors
ordered him away to New Mexico, and again there seemed nothing to do but
to promote Wheaton. Thompson wished to sell his stock and resign, but
Porter would not have it so; but when, after two years, it was clear
that the cashier would never again be fit for continuous service in the
bank, Wheaton was duly elected cashier and Thompson was made
vice-president.
Wheaton had now been in Clarkson fifteen years, and he was well aware
that other young men, with influential connections, had not done nearly
so well as he. He treasured no illusions as to his abilities; he did not
think he had a genius for business; but he had demonstrated to his own
satisfaction that such qualities as he possessed,--industry, sobriety
and obedience,--brought results, and with these results he was well
satisfied. He hoped some day to be rich, but he was content to make
haste slowly. He never speculated. He read in the newspapers every day
of men holding responsible positions who embezzled and absconded, but
there was never any question in his mind as between honesty and knavery.
It irritated him when these occurrences were commented on facetiously
before him; he did not relish jokes which carried an implication that he
too might belong to the dubious cashier class; and inquiries as to
whether he would spend his vacation in Canada or, if it were winter, in
Guatemala, were not received in good part, for he had much personal
dignity and little humor. He was counted among the older men of the town
rather than among men of his own age, and he found himself much more at
ease among his seniors. The young men appreciated his good qualities and
respected him; but he felt that he was not one of them; socially, he was
voted very slow, and there was an impression abroad that he was stingy.
Certainly he did not spend his money frivolously, and he never had done
so. Many fathers held him up as an example to their sons, and this
tended further to the creation of a feeling among his contemporaries
that he was lacking in good fellowship.
Raridan knew the personal history of most of his fellow townsmen, and he
was fond of characterizing those whom he particularly liked or disliked,
for the benefit of his friends. He took it upon himself to sketch
Wheaton for John Saxton's benefit in this fashion.
"Jim Wheaton's one of those men who never make mistakes," said Raridan,
with the scorn of a man whose own mistakes do not worry him. "He went
into that bank as a boy, and was first a model messenger, and then a
model clerk; and when they had to have a cashier there was the model
assistant, who had been a model everything else, so they put him in.
There wasn't anybody else for the job; and I guess he's a good man for
it, too. A bank cashier doesn't dare to make mistakes; and as Wheaton is
not of that warm, emotional nature that would lead him to lend money
without getting something substantial to hold before the borrower got
away, he's the model cashier. You've heard of those bank cashiers who
can refuse a loan to a man and send him out of the bank singing happy
chants. Well, Jim isn't that kind. When he turns down a man, the man
doesn't go on his way rejoicing. I don't know how much money Wheaton's
got. He's made something, of course, and Porter would probably sell him
stock up to a certain point. He'll die rich, and nobody, I fancy, will
ever be any gladder because he's favored this little old earth with his
presence."
As a bank clerk the teller's cage had shut Wheaton off from the world.
Young women of social distinction who came sometimes to get checks
cashed, knew him as a kind of automaton, that looked at both sides of
their checks and at themselves, and then passed out coin and paper to
them; they saw him nowhere else, and did not bother themselves about
him. After his promotion to be assistant cashier, he saw the world
closer at hand. He had a desk and could sit down and talk to the men
whom he had studied from the cage for so long. The young women, too,
approached him no longer with checks to be cashed, but with little books
in which they urged him officially and personally to subscribe to
charities. Porter, who was naturally a man of generous impulses, knew
his own weakness and made the cashier the bank's almoner. He was very
sure that Wheaton would be as careful of the bank's money as of his own;
he had taken judicial knowledge of the fact that Wheaton's balance on
the bank's books had shown a marked and steady growth through all the
years of his connection with it.
Wheaton's promotion to the cashiership had come in the spring; and
shortly afterward he had changed his way of living in a few particulars.
He had lodged for years in a boarding house frequented by clerks; a
place where his fellow boarders were, among others, a music teacher, a
milliner and the chief operator of the telephone exchange. He had not
felt above them; their dancing class and occasional theater party had
seemed fine to him. Porter now suggested that Wheaton should be a member
of the Clarkson Club, and Wheaton assented, on the president's
representation that "it would be a good thing for the bank." Vacant
apartments were offered at this time in The Bachelors', as it was
called, and he availed himself of the opportunity to change his place
of residence. He had considered the matter of taking a room at the club,
but this, after reflection, he rejected as unwise. The club was a new
institution in the town, and he was aware that there were conservative
people in Clarkson who looked on it as a den of iniquity,--with what
justification he did not know from personal experience, but he had heard
it referred to in this way at the boarding house table. He knew Raridan
and the others at The Bachelors', but his acquaintance with them was of
a perfunctory business character. When he moved to The Bachelors',
Raridan, who was always punctilious in social matters, formally called
on him in his room, as did also Captain Wheelock, the army officer then
stationed in Clarkson on recruiting service. The others in the house
welcomed him less formally as they chanced to meet him in the hall or on
the stairway; they were busy men who worked long hours and did not
bother themselves about the amenities and graces of life.
His change to The Bachelors' was of importance to Wheaton in many ways.
He saw here, in the intimacies of their common table, men of a higher
social standing than he had known before. Their way of chaffing one
another seemed to him very bright; they mocked at the gods and were not
destroyed. Raridan was a new species and spoke a strange tongue. Raridan
and Wheelock appeared at the table in dinner-coats, and after a few
weeks Wheaton followed their example. Raridan, he knew, dressed whether
he went out or not, and he established his own habit in this particular
with as little delay as possible. The table then balanced, the smelter
manager, the secretary of the terra cotta manufacturing company, and
the traveling passenger agent of the Transcontinental Railroad appearing
in the habiliments which they wore at their respective places of
business, and Raridan, Wheaton and Wheelock in black and white.
The humor of this division was not lost on the traveling passenger
agent, who chaffed the "glad rag" faction, as he called it, until
Raridan took up arms for his own side of the table.
"It may be true, sir, what you say about a division here between the
working and non-working classes; but wit and beauty have from most
ancient times bedecked themselves in robes of purity. A man like
yourself, whose business is to persuade people to ride on the worst
railroad on earth, should properly array himself in sackcloth and ashes,
and not in purple and fine linen, which belong to those who severally
give their thoughts to the,--er--promotion of peace"--indicating
Wheelock--"sound finances," indicating Wheaton, "and--er--in my own
case--"
"Yes, do tell us," said the railroad man, ironically.
"To faith and good works," said Warrick imperturbably.
"And mostly works,--I don't think!" declared Wheelock.
The relations between Porter and Wheaton were strictly of a business
character. This was not by intention on Porter's part. He assumed that
at some time he or Thompson had known all about Wheaton's antecedents;
and after so many years of satisfactory service, during the greater part
of which the bank had been protected against Wheaton, as against all the
rest of the employees, by a bonding company, he accepted the cashier
without any question. Before Evelyn's return he had one day expressed to
Wheaton his satisfaction that he would soon have a home again, and
Wheaton remarked with civil sympathy that Miss Porter must now be "quite
a young lady."
"Oh, yes; you must come up to the house when we get going again," Porter
answered.
Wheaton had seen the inside of few houses in Clarkson. He had a
recollection of having been sent to Porter's several times, while he was
still an errand boy in the bank, to fetch Porter's bag on occasions when
the president had been called away unexpectedly. He remembered Evelyn
Porter as she used to come as a child and sit in the carriage outside
the bank to wait for her father; the Porters stood to him then, and now,
for wealth and power.
Raridan had a contempt for Wheaton's intellectual deficiencies; and
praise of Wheaton's steadiness and success vexed him as having some
sting for himself; but his own amiable impulses got the better of his
prejudices, and he showed Wheaton many kindnesses. When the others at
The Bachelors' nagged Wheaton, it was Raridan who threw himself into the
controversy to take Wheaton's part. He took him to call at some of the
houses he knew best, and though this was a matter of propinquity he knew
nevertheless that he preferred Wheaton to the others in the house.
Wheaton was not noisy nor pretentious and the others were sometimes
both.
Wheaton soon found it easy to do things that he had never thought of
doing before. He became known to the florist and the haberdasher; there
was a little Hambletonian at a certain liveryman's which Warry Raridan
drove a good deal, and he had learned from Warry how pleasant it was to
drive out to the new country club in a runabout instead of using the
street car, which left a margin of plebeian walking at the end of the
line. He had never smoked, but he now made it a point to carry
cigarettes with him. Raridan and many other young men of his
acquaintance always had them; he fancied that the smoking of a cigarette
gave a touch of elegance to a gentleman. Captain Wheelock smoked
cigarettes which bore his own monogram, and as he said that these did
not cost any more than others of the same brand, Wheaton allowed the
captain to order some for him. But while he acquired the superficial
graces, he did not lose his instinctive thrift; he had never attempted
to plunge, even on what his associates at The Bachelors' called "sure
things"; and he was equally incapable of personal extravagances. If he
bought flowers he sent them where they would tell in his favor. If he
had five dollars to give to the _Gazette's_ Ice Fund for the poor, he
considered that when the newspaper printed his name in its list of
acknowledgments, between Timothy Margrave, who gave fifty dollars, and
William Porter, who gave twenty-five, he had received an adequate return
on his investment.
A few days after Evelyn Porter came home, Wheaton followed Raridan to
his room one evening after dinner. Raridan had set The Bachelors' an
example of white flannels for the warm weather, and Wheaton also had
abolished his evening clothes. Raridan's rooms had not yet lost their
novelty for him. The pictures, the statuettes, the books, the broad
couch with its heap of varicolored pillows, the table with its
candelabra, by which Raridan always read certain of the poets,--these
still had their mystery for Wheaton.
"Going out to-night?" he asked with a show of indifference.
"Hadn't thought of it," answered Raridan, who was cutting the pages of a
magazine. "Kick the cat off the couch there, won't you?--it's that
blessed Chinaman's beast. Don't know what a Mongolian is doing with a
cat,--Egyptian bird, isn't it?"
"Don't let me interrupt if you're reading," said Wheaton. "But I thought
some of dropping in at Mr. Porter's. Miss Porter's home now, I believe."
"That's a good idea," said Raridan, who saw what was wanted. He threw
his magazine at the cat and got up and yawned. "Suppose we do go?"
The call had been successfully managed. Miss Porter was very pretty, and
not so young as Wheaton expected to find her. Raridan left him talking
to her and went across to the library, where Mr. Porter was reading his
evening paper. Raridan had a way of wandering about in other people's
houses, which Wheaton envied him. Miss Porter seemed to take his call as
a matter of course, and when her father came out presently and greeted
him casually as if he were a familiar of the house he felt relieved and
gratified.